A serial stabber whose crimes against women started in South Carolina more than 40 years ago has pleaded guilty to another murder.

The Bronx district attorney's office said Lucius Crawford, 62, admitted in court Thursday that he killed Nella West, a New York prostitute, in 1993.

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The office said that under a plea agreement, Crawford will be sentenced to 25 years to life in prison -- the same sentence imposed when Crawford was convicted last year in the 2012 stabbing death of his girlfriend.

The sentences are to be served concurrently.

Before being charged in the killings, Crawford spent about 30 years total in prison for non-fatal stabbings of women in South Carolina and New York.

Police said Crawford’s penchant for stabbing women dates back to 1973 when he went on a four-day stabbing spree in Charleston. He would approach women and talk to them, and then slash their arms or legs.

Crawford was sentenced to prison for the attacks, but once he was out in 1977, he went on another spree in Charleston in which he stabbed five women, ages 14 to 28.

He was again sentenced to prison. When he got out, he assaulted his ex-girlfriend in October 1993 and stabbed a woman he worked with in New York.

Crawford was on parole after serving 13 years for the New York stabbing when the New York Police Department reopened a cold case from October 1993 in which a Bronx woman was stabbed several times and her skull was crushed. Detectives ran DNA tests that matched Crawford.

Investigators then learned that Crawford was also suspected in another cold case stabbing death of a Yonkers woman in 1993.

Detectives went to Crawford's apartment in December 2012 with his parole officer. Inside they found the body of his girlfriend, who had been stabbed to death.

Police said once they located Crawford, he admitted killing the woman and the two others in 1993.